Review/ Television; A TV Movie With a Familiar Ring

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR

Published: January 1, 1991

Few artifacts of popular culture invite more condescension than the made-for-television movie. There are some notable exceptions, usually those more ambitious productions inevitably nominated for Emmy Awards, but most television movies seem perfectly content to be, at best, mediocre. A case in point: "Her Wicked Ways," at 9 tonight on CBS .

This particular exercise is not content to be ridiculously flabby on its own. Its plot is so much a rip-off of "All About Eve" that comparisons with the film classic are unavoidable and, in every respect, embarrassing. The 1950 film starred Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as a Broadway star and a conniving ingenue.

"Her Wicked Ways" gives us Barbara Eden ("I Dream of Jeannie") and Heather Locklear ("Dynasty") as a star television-news correspondent and a journalism novice determined to get her job. "All About Eve" had a memorably witty script by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, its director. This television movie, its script credited to Janice Hickey and Michael Pardridge, amounts to a soggy imitation.

The veteran network correspondent Tess O'Brien covers the White House. Her bosses in New York know that Tess wants to be anchor of the nightly news. She puts it this way: "You know damn well I want this job, and I deserve it."

When Peruvian guerrillas take one of Tess's colleagues hostage, young Melody Shepherd arrives in Washington from a small affiliate station. Melody says she is the hostage's niece. Although someone mentions that the captured man never said, over some 20 years, anything about having a niece, good old Tess takes the novice under her wing, even inviting her home until she can find an apartment. Melody's working technique is disarmingly simple: "A bit of promise. A lot of suggestion."

It takes the usually astute Tess an incredibly long time to figure out what's going on, but she begins to get the picture as Melody seduces not only her son, Andrew (David James Elliott), but also her New York boss, Brad (Jed Allen), who decides -- shades of a certain morning news show -- that early viewers might appreciate a younger woman, all blond and perky, while getting ready for work. Finally, Tess catches Melody going through her personal computer files. That's it.

"We may be working on the same story," Tess says, "but my work is my work, and your work is whatever I tell you to do."

Melody is anything but subtle. Surveying Washington at night she gushes about "the sheer power of this town: like an aphrodisiac" (the movie's original title was "Potomac Fever"). Meanwhile, Tess has been having, mostly by long distance, an intense affair with Peter (Stuart Wilson), an English foreign correspondent who wants her to give up everything and run off with him to Spain. This leads to endless discussions on the nature of love. She: "But I love you." He: "And I love you. Therein lies the tragedy." (Presumably, the British can get away with lines like that.)

And in the end "Her Wicked Ways" is thoroughly dishonest, preoccupied only with giving the mass audience what it supposedly craves -- an upbeat ending. Bette Davis may have allowed herself to be bested by the unstoppable Eve, but this is the world of television stars and Barbara Eden is not about to take second place to any Melody Shepherd. Tess gets not just her revenge but also the anchor job and Peter who, in case you missed the point, says, "Your life is damn near perfect, isn't it?"

Television movies can be vehicles of substance. More gumption and less cynical calculation can help considerably. But as the first of the year, "Her Wicked Ways" is hardly an encouraging omen. Her Wicked Ways